This is one of my very first tables in which fabric and wood were combined. It was in my thesis show for my MFA. I made four tables of similar design, with slight variations and called them “Stripe Reliquaries.” This one is “Stripe Reliquary-Blue.” There are also green, red, and turquoise versions. Just as a religious reliquary might house and display a relic from a saint, the interior space of the table is used to house and display the striped handmade fabric that I considered to be the relic. I wanted to present a normally mundane element in our lives, the fabric, as a precious thing to be noticed and appreciated.

The arrangement of the fabric in this table was meant to illustrate the most textile-centric posture possible – scrunched yet soft. This fabric is some of my all-time favorite. I love the wide stripes down the middle where the yellow fades to orange. And then on the sides, there are narrow stripes in two shades of blue that are meant to match the endgrain of the plywood in color and size.